Court fights to prevent Trump from running again for White House

ST. Paul, Minn, Nov. 3: Efforts to use the Constitution's "insurrection" clause to prevent former President Donald Trump from running again for the White House turn to Minnesota on Thursday with oral arguments before the state Supreme Court, a hearing that will unfold as a similar case plays out in Colorado.

Those lawsuits are among several filed around the country to bar Trump from state ballots in 2024 over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, an assault intended to halt Congress' certification of Joe Biden's win. The Colorado and Minnesota cases are furthest along, putting one or both on an expected path to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never decided the issue.

The central argument is the same — that Section Three of the 14th Amendment bars from holding office anyone who previously swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection" against it.

In the Minnesota case, the plaintiffs are asking the state's highest court to declare that Trump is disqualified and direct the secretary of state to keep him off the ballot for the state's March 5 primary. They've also broached the possibility of the court ordering an evidentiary hearing, which would mean further proceedings and delay a final resolution, something Trump's legal team opposes.

"The events of January 6, 2021, amounted to an insurrection or a rebellion under Section 3: a violent, coordinated effort to storm the Capitol to obstruct and prevent the Vice President of the United States and the United States Congress from fulfilling their constitutional roles by certifying President Biden's victory, and to illegally extend then-President Trump's tenure in office," the petitioners wrote.

Trump's lawyers acknowledged in their filings that the question of whether he "is suited to hold the Presidency has been the defining political controversy of our national life" for the last several years. They've also argued that while the events of Jan. 6 devolved into a riot, they were not an insurrection in the constitutional sense. Trump's lawyers noted that the Republican former president has never been charged in any court with insurrection — although he does face state and federal criminal charges for his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, a Democrat.

"Both the federal Constitution and Minnesota law place the resolution of this political issue where it belongs: the democratic process, in the hands of either Congress or the people of the United States," they wrote in one of their filings.

Some of Trump's main arguments are that Minnesota and federal law don't allow courts to strike him from the ballot and that the insurrection clause doesn't apply to presidents, anyway. (AP)